A Sword for a Dragon (45 page)

Relkin looked her in the eyes. “Yes, my lady, it will be very close.”

Ribela left them, and Lagdalen sat beside Relkin on the wall. She laid her head briefly on his shoulder.

“I am so glad to be able to see you for a few moments. There is so much to tell.”

“The Great Mother must have willed it.”

She looked at him, “You, of all people, who always invokes the old gods.”

“I would not use her name in vain, not with you at least.”

“You better not.” Lagdalen had broken all the rules and had been thrown out of the Novitiate, but her faith in the Great Mother was strong.

“And maybe we will be relieved in time. Another legion would be a help.”

“Captain Peek assured the Lady Ribela that the fleet will be here on the morrow.”

“I hope so. The tower won’t last much longer, they say. We’ll be fighting there by nightfall.”

“That soon?”

“Yes. They rebuilt the ram, the roof rides right down on the ground. We can’t get a hook under it anymore.”

A shout on the distant wall made them turn their heads.

“Ware above” came the cry repeated across the Imperial City, until a voice finally shouted it out to the people at the jetty.

Relkin looked up and pointed. A huge block of mud-brick masonry tumbled in the air overhead for a moment, and then it landed with a terrific crash on the southern side of the little ziggurat to Auros, Emperor of the Universe. Brick and plaster broke up in a great cloud and pieces ricocheted out across the area below the temple.

Cornets suddenly pealed, and men broke out from the guard barracks along the base of the walls and began moving the trebuchets around to face the south. Men with signal flags communicated with the spotters on the wall.

Within a few minutes, the legion trebuchets were replying, their beams thudding against the uprights in a hurried rhythm as they hurled rocks at the enemy’s great trebuchet.

“It is hard to talk of pleasant things with all this going on.”

“It is never hard to talk of anything with Lagdalen of the Tarcho.”

“It is wearing on the spirit, though. I pray that the ships will get here in time.”

“So do we all. Of course, our troubles won’t be over. We’ll still be fighting them over these poor walls and they won’t stand up to much and the enemy will be able to bring their numbers to bear. We’d be better in the open field where the dragons can maneuver.”

“But if we have to, we can board the great ships. Have you ever seen the
Spruce
?”

“No, but I have seen
Wheat
and
Barley
at harbor in Marneri, they’re just as big.”

“Then we will be saved, for the ships will come tomorrow.”

Relkin smiled and hugged her.

“Then our hearts will be strong with that knowledge, and I thank you for it Lagdalen of the Tarcho.”

They talked for a while of other places and other times, far from the besieged Imperial City of Ourdh, but at length Lagdalen rose to her feet.

“You must feed two great dragons, Relkin. I have to feed two dozen hungry little mice.”

“Mice?”

“You remember the rats in Tummuz Orgmeen and the magic they worked?”

“How could I ever forget?”

“It is something like that.” She smiled at his incomprehension. “Good-bye for now, my friend, may the Mother watch over you and keep your arm strong, and may she also watch over my friend the broketail dragon.”

Relkin waved good-bye to her and heaved a sigh. He was too young for her, and that was the sad, ineluctable truth.

He sat there and took one last look at the
Nutbrown

riding at her anchor. Vlok’s dream came back to him, and he shivered, feeling faintly uneasy.

“The ground was burning, right under our feet…”

Suddenly he was aware of another presence beside him. He turned his head and gave a start. It was Miranswa, wearing a cotton shift and sandals.

“Hello, Relkin,” she said.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “I looked everywhere.”

Miranswa smiled enigmatically.

“I saw you talking with the girl.”

“Yes, well, that was Lagdalen of the Tarcho, my best friend in this world.”

“She could have received the honor of sacrifice, of having her blood spilled down the side of the ziggurat.”

Relkin’s mouth tightened into a line.

“No one will kill her while I can prevent it. We are like brother and sister.”

Miranswa sat beside him, and moved close.

“You stare at the ship. We could be safe if we could be on the ship.”

“Not me, you’re talking desertion. They’d hang me and they’d be right to.”

“But what will you do when they break over the walls this time?”

“We will stand and die where we stand. It is simple.”

“It is terrible to think of death. I do not want to die.”

“Nor I, Miranswa.”

Suddenly she pressed herself against him, he held her and their lips met.

“Have you ever lain with a woman, Relkin?”

“In actual fact, no, though not from want of trying.”

She smiled. “I thought so.”

“Where have you been sleeping?” he asked.

“I could not remain in the wagon. They were searching them, and I did not want to be thrust into the slave city. I hid myself. Come with me, it is a safe place, we can go there now.”

“My dragons,” he began, suddenly uncomfortable.

“They can wait for an hour. They are asleep, I know, I checked there for you. Come, I offer you that which you have never had and which you may never have again.” She took his hand.

He accompanied her through the fruit orchard of the Imperial Gardens and beyond the gardens to the small Temple of Gingo-La set in the northeastern corner of the Imperial City.

Beneath a staircase, Miranswa pulled back a narrow door. Within was a small room. Relkin pointed up at an inscription on the wall in the Uldi script of Ourdh.

“What does that say?”

She glanced at it.

“This is the house of the goddess of love.”

“This?”

“This is her temple.”

“I have not had the best experiences in the temples of your goddess.”

“This is the house of the goddess of love. What we do here is sacred, Relkin. Come, lie with me and learn about the art of love.”

Relkin did not argue any further.

Inside the Grand Palace, Lagdalen and Ribela prepared for another great spell saying. Ribela wound strips of black cloth around her wrists and prepared some lissim twigs for burning.

As she did so, she half turned to Lagdalen.

“I was glad to meet your benefactor at last. I have heard much concerning this young Relkin of Quosh. He seemed an honorable sort, not at all the sort of scamp that I had imagined.”

Lagdalen cast her eyes down to the bowl in which she broke fresh bread into small chunks.

“He has grown up a lot since last year. He is now a soldier.”

“Yes, I saw that in his face. He has seen much of the harsher side of life. And, of course, I know what he and you achieved together. Your courage in that terrible place has already earned you both a place in the history of heroes.”

Lagdalen blushed. The Lady Ribela had never spoken to her about what had happened at Tummuz Orgmeen.

“It was the Grey Lady, my part was really quite small.”

“That is a very long spell my dear and not an easy one. I think the Mother was guiding you that day, and she does not guide those who do not deserve her favor. Your heart is brave and true Lagdalen of the Tarcho. One reason why I insisted that you accompany me and leave your baby behind. You have the strength to become a Great Witch, my dear, if you develop the patience and the desire.”

Lagdalen was shocked. She had never thought of herself as a witch at all. She had been thrown out of the Novitiate. Her academic career was a complete failure. And here was the Queen of Mice telling her that she could be a Great Witch, not just a Witch of Standing.

“It is time,” said Ribela. “You will bolt the door, my dear, and do not leave the room unless you absolutely have to. I shall not be more than an hour or two in the trance state. Keep the mice well fed, they will come to you as they usually do. They will be very hungry.”

The Queen of Mice unlocked the mouse cage that they kept in this room. The mice, dozens of them now, tumbled out and eagerly explored the bowl of bread soaked in oil and sprinkled with salt. Ribela hummed something under her breath, reached down, and ran her hands through the mice, holding them and squeezing them gently.

Then she began to keen on a higher note, and the spell saying began.

In a locked and barricaded chamber, Lagdalen watched the lady work up the great magic. At times the air seemed to swirl and sparkle, and she thought she heard distant music playing. At other times there was a sudden waft of ocean scent. Sensory misperceptions caused by the magical power.

Throughout the spell casting, however, Lagdalen’s part was simple. After a few declensions to put herself in a wakeful state, she fed the mice and broke bread into the bowl.

Ribela pronounced a swift stream of charged syllables, and the mice whirled around her feet and became a blur. From her lips, there burst the volumes of power and the declensions that shaped them, and quickly she sank into the state of deep trance.

Once more her consciousness detached from her body and hovered, ready to go a wandering. However, for this mission she was not employing the pure astral projection. She would need to do, as well as to observe. This would vastly reduce the size of her “node” in the dark sea of chaos and would also give her a slight degree of physical presence there. That, of course, meant that she would be vulnerable to the predators of that world.

The final volumes came with a burst of energy. She felt the implosive effect and her mind view sank down into the subworld hallucination of chaos.

Long practice had given her the ability to read the patterns of the swirling, formless backwash of grey static. Likewise she heard the true sounds of this world, high wispy notes like the playing of pipes tuned above the reach of the human ear. But it was hard to detect these faint sounds above the heavy rasp and wheeze of electrical sparking that raged through the chaotic realm.

Carefully she concentrated her mind to the sensory task and scanned about herself in all directions. The characteristic piping tones of a Thingweight did not present themselves in any direction. She searched for the other, lesser predators. To have to fight off one of them would create such a noise here that a Thing-weight would be bound to come.

She detected several within her range, but there were none lying along her projected course.

The distance was not far and thus there was no need for the energies of a Black Mirror, another signal that could easily draw the great predators. She could move through the ether, not with the speed of her astral self but more swiftly than during a physical translation through the Black Mirror.

Forward she sped toward the sector of her interest. As she approached she scanned carefully, unsure as to what she should expect. There was something new in this evil worked here by the Dark Masters—something she had never encountered before.

And then she saw a strange fountain of dark energies ahead, a sudden blaze of black fire across the nether realms. It was repeated, again and again and again.

She moved toward the source. Another pulse came. The energies were strong, but they were in the class she had expected. This was magic from the Masters, from the higher levels of their dread codes.

She made transition, rising out of the subworld of chaos and rematerializing as a blue wisp of fire about six inches tall. Her node floated through the darkness above a scene from hell.

Thick smoke arose from a fire at one side of a large warehouse space. Lines of imps, armed with swords and whips, compressed a great mass of humanity between them and forced them up a set of stairs.

At one end of the room, a raised floor had been set up with rows of gibbets. Beneath the raised floor, naked men stirred a great pool of mud.

On the platform the people were slaughtered, their throats cut and their bodies swung out, heads down to drain over the precious mud below.

As if from far away, she heard the clamor of those about to die. As a wisp of fire, she lacked acuity on the auditory range in the higher world. To one side the mud was poured into big molds, it ran with a soupy texture that was chilling to see.

She felt a presence, a sudden power on the higher planes. A dark, hunched figure had entered the warehouse. This was the source of the black fire, this was the entity she had sensed near the demon in Dzu during her near-disastrous astral reconnaissance.

She was curious. A Master? Come here to Ourdh to fight this petty struggle? Why would they not send a magician, or even a Doom? But she could tell at once that this being was far beyond any Doom in its strength.

The figure gestured and a great flash of dark energy suffused one of the molds. Ribela sensed the sudden invigoration of the mud. The spell was harsh, based on death energies, but it was also quite simple in a sense, and very vulnerable to her countermeasures.

Another flash came, and another and another, and it was as if red lightning was crackling through the room. On it went until all the ready molds had been invigorated. Ribela marveled at the power of it. Truly the Dark Arts of the Masters had elevated them to a level of strength beyond anything known on a world like Ryetelth. They had earned a move to a higher board, a place where gammadion and archbishop dueled.

Below, on the floor, sweating teams of slaves hauled the molds aside and brought in empty ones to be filled. The freshly invigorated molds were stacked along the wall, where a great pile of them was already waiting. The dark being turned and left the place of death. A heavy door shut behind it.

At once the killing resumed on the raised floor. The slaves stirred the mud below. And down from the ceiling dropped the wisp of blue fire that then scuttled across the molds, pausing at each one to insert a positor and press home a zest of corruption, a tiny spell to undo the invigoration. There were a great number of molds to visit, thousands in fact, for the enemy had been hard at work creating a new host of the giant warriors of mud since the fall of the city. Soon they would be hardened and ready, in time for the follow-up to the grand assault on the breach.